Update 5:

Simmon’s opinions about the Gulf Oil spill seem, in retrospect, to have been discredited by events and reports that appear to show that the spill was far, far less of a disaster than imagined. That being the case, what would be a cogent thesis that would explain what’s been going on so far? (more to come)

Note: We’ve never bought the “peak oil” thesis, at least not in its black-and-white incarnation (“The world is running completely out of oil”). We’ve always subscribed to some version of the abiotic theory, since we read about it in a newsletter put out by respected fund manager Bill Miller (of Legg Mason).

Update 4:

This blog post suggesting some kind of a “hit” on Simmons is showing up on the first page of a Google search for “Matt Simmons death,” so, to all appearances, it’s not conspiracy-mongering per se that’s the problem for the powers-that-be (PTB).

It’s who mongers a given conspiracy. Yours truly is, apparently, not “licensed to spill” (sigh)….

Anyway, the post suggests that Simmons might have become persona non grata for whistle-blowing on the BP story. However,  if you read through commentary about Simmon’s public pronouncements, knowledgeable insiders seem to think he was a panic-monger with a vested interest in what he said, not a whistle-blower. His public statements were intended to bolster stock positions he held. He was, after all, a friend of the Hunt brothers –  famous for having tried to corner the silver market…

Of course, there’s no reason Simmons couldn’t be a panic-monger who turned into a whistle-blower…. or some variant thereof.

So, while I think his death certainly falls under the category of “suspicious,” what the reasons are and who the perpetrators might be are questions that are a bit more complicated than one would first think. Someone who was an adviser to George Bush, did work for Halliburton (which, along with Transocean and BP, was involved in the Macondo well), “exposed” the Saudis about the depletion of their oil stocks, put a lot of money into alternative energy businesses that stood to profit from the demise of the oil industry,  pushed the “peak oil” thesis, tried to short BP stock to a dollar without disclosing his position publicly, and recently pronounced the oil business dead….is likely to have made more than one enemy.

Update 3:

Died in his hot tub from drowning, with heart disease as the contributing factor. That’s the verdict of of the autopsy on Monday.

“Matthew Simmons’ body was found Sunday night in his hot tub, investigators said. An autopsy by the state medical examiner’s office concluded Monday that he died from accidental drowning with heart disease as a contributing factor”

Update 2:

One report says that the cause of death is not confirmed:

Bangor Daily News Today 01:55 PM in reply to MyNameIsTaken

Updating as I go along:

*Coincidentally,  when this news came over PR wire, I was blogging about remote brain-sensing and researching microwave-induced heart attacks (a technology that’s been around for 30 years).

(This train of thought was set off by a link about electronic surveillance and induced illness in the comments section to a recent post about GPS surveillance).

“Neurological research has found that the brain has specific frequencies for each voluntary movement called preparatory sets. When you pick up an object, there is a specific preparatory set for this action. By firing at your chest a microwave beam containing the ELF signals given off by the heart, this organ can be put into a chaotic state, the so called heart attack. In this way, high profile leaders of political parties, who are prone to heart attacks, can be killed off -before they cause any trouble. Neil Kinnock’s Labour government was allegedly cheated out of an election victory by postal vote rigging in twenty key marginal seats. When a new even more electable Labour leader was found, it is rumoured that John Smith, the then Labour leader, was prompted to have a fatal heart attack, while walking in the country with his family, by means of a concealed microwave device which operated on the Vagus nerve to bring about a massive heart attack. Since MI5 have a long history of naked hatred toward the Labour Party, there may be some truth in the above, though no hard evidence has yet been found.”

More here about microwave weapons at The Daily Mail.

I’m not suggesting that this is what happened with Simmons. I’m simply pointing out the coincidence that I was researching microwave-induced heart attacks this morning, and had been discussing Matt Simmons and whether he was the source of the story about a massive volcano of oil under Macondo…

And then we get this news.

Simmons *died of a heart attack in a hot tub at his home in Maine,” according to Deal Journal, which also adds this:

“Simmons was back in the limelight this spring when BP oil’s rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded. He went out on a limb (his critics say too far out) by predicting in June that the spill would cause BP to go bankrupt and that “if a hurricane comes and blows this to shore, it could paint the Gulf Coast black.”

Business Insider notes that Simmons also didn’t think BP’s cap was sufficient:

“What we don’t know anything about is the open hole which is caused by the drill bit when it tossed the blow-out preventer way out of the hole…and 120,000 minimum of toxic poison has now covered the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. So what they’re talking about is the biggest environmental cover-up ever. And they knew that that well, that riser, would finally deplete. And then they could say it’s over. And unfortunately, we now have killed the Gulf of Mexico.” (comment, July 21, cited in BI)

I just noticed that my blog post, which was on page one of a Google search of “Matt Simmons dies,” above Zerohedge, has suddenly disappeared in about five seconds flat…not to be seen for the first several pages (not in the first 15)…could it get buried that deep that fast? Maybe a lot of people jumped on it….

(I just checked and Matt Simmon’s death is the 14th most searched string on google…)

ORIGINAL POST

Not to get all conspiratorial, but we were just discussing Matt Simmons, the energy expert and peak-oil alarmist (or realist, depending on where you stand) on The Daily Bell forum, last Saturday.

Simmons has been accused by some of doom-mongering over the BP oil spill:

“Simmons also says that as the leak has no casing, a relief well will not work, and the only possible resolution is, as he said previously, to use a small nuclear explosion to convert the rock to glass. Simmons concludes that as punishment for BP’s arrogance and stupidity the government “will take all their cash.”

I was wondering if he was the source for one of Pastor Lindsay Williams’ more infamous statements on Alex Jones.…that the Maconda well had tapped into something much bigger, like a volcano of oil…That was just a couple of days ago.

Now comes news that Simmons, aged 67, just died from a heart attack in his pool.

The technology for recording brainwaves from a distance has existed for sometime, lending credence to people who’ve complained of government remote surveillance. Here’s a BBC report from 17 November, 2002:

“Scientists have developed a sensor that can record brainwaves without the need for electrodes to be inserted into the brain or even placed on the scalp.

They believe the new sensor will lead to major advances in the collection and display of electrical information from the brain – and could even be used to control machines in a more effective way than is currently possible.

It is a new age as far as sensing the electrical dynamics of the body is concerned
Conventional electroencephalograms (EEGs) are collected either by inserting needle electrodes directly into the brain or by fixing electrodes to the scalp.
This process often leads to trauma, so that it may be necessary to remove some of the patient’s hair.
In addition, the process of attaching conventional electrodes may lead to skin abrasion and irritation.
Now a team from the Centre for Physical Electronics at the University of Sussex has developed a far more user-friendly technique.

From a distance

Instead of measuring electric current flow through a fixed-on electrode, the new method takes advantage of the latest developments in sensor technology to measure electric fields from the brain without actually having to make direct contact with the head.
We deal with patients who have Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia who often have delusions about electrodes in their head
Lead researcher Professor Terry Clark said current imaging techniques were very good at providing information about fixed anatomical structures in the body.
But it had proved more difficult to find ways to monitor the body’s ever-changing electrical currents – the information that was needed to gain a real insight into the electrical workings of the body.
He said the new system provided a way to do this effectively, and because it was non-invasive it was completely safe, and more accurate because it did not interfere with the electrical fields generated by the body.
Professor Clark said: “It is a new age as far as sensing the electrical dynamics of the body is concerned, like seeing in colour for the first time.

Many possibilities

“The possibilities for the future are boundless.
“The advantages offered by these sensors compared with the currently used contact electrodes may act to stimulate new developments in multichannel EEG monitoring and in real-time electrical imaging of the brain.
“By picking up brain signals non-invasively, we could find ourselves controlling machinery with our thoughts alone: a marriage of mind and machine.”
The same group of scientists has already made remote-sensing ECG units which can detect heartbeats with no connections at all.

Professor Tonmoy Sharma, a neuropsychologist at the Clinical Neuroscience Research Centre at Dartford, Kent, said a device to measure electrical activity in the brain without the need for electrodes would potentially be very useful.
“We deal with patients who have Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia who often have delusions about electrodes in their head, and who refuse treatment.
“A non-invasive method would allow us to monitor the effects of drugs on the brain over time, and to tailor treatments more effectively.”

no cookies   | no search-term records   | access log deleted within 48 hours

Scroogle, which is Google scraped of its invasive elements, wasn’t working a few months back, but I looked at the site today and it looks fine.

In case you don’t know why you need Scroogle, here’s why: no cookies, no search-term records, access log deleted within 48 hours.

(From the Scroogle website)

How Scroogle’s SSL option protects your privacy

Secure Socket Layer is an encryption protocol that is available in almost all browsers. If you’ve ever entered your credit card number to purchase something online, you should have checked for the little yellow padlock at the bottom right of your browser. That means no one can intercept your number as it travels between your browser and the online merchant, because the browser has established a secure connection. That’s SSL.

For Scroogle, SSL is used to hide your search terms from anyone who might be monitoring traffic between your browser and Scroogle’s servers. This encryption happens when you send your search terms to Scroogle, and it also happens when Scroogle sends the results of your search back to you. No one snooping between your browser and Scroogle can figure out what you were looking for, because the information is encrypted and looks like gibberish. The connection between Scroogle and Google, which still must happen for every search, is not encrypted because Google doesn’t use SSL. However, this connection is not associated with you at that point, and only Scroogle knows who entered those search terms. Your IP address is dropped before your search terms are sent to Google.

Most employers monitor the websites visited by their employees. There are impressive “employer spyware” packages such as Websense that they use to do this. Because the GET method is preferred by almost all search engines (see this page), even if the employer sees only the web address that you used to arrive at Google, he already knows the search terms you requested. With a record of all the search terms you’ve used while you were at work, each with a date and time recorded in his log, your employer has a pretty good idea of what you’ve been thinking. There are no laws that prevent employers from doing this sort of snooping.

If you use Wi-Fi and you haven’t set up your router for secure operation, your neighbors could see what you are doing on the web. Again, your search terms might be interesting to them.

In some countries, the government could be monitoring your web activity by requiring your service provider to log the sites you visit, and make the logs available on demand. In fact, most governments wouldn’t even have to ask the service provider for this information. They could tap the line upstream of the provider, and just look for packets containing www.google.com/search. Next to this are your search terms in plain text, with your IP address in the same packet. Government spies salivate at the thought of data-mining this information. With your search terms revealing what you are thinking, and the email you send revealing your network of associates, that’s almost everything they need to know about you.

Besides encrypting everything between your browser and Scroogle, there are other details that may interest you about SSL. We prefer the POST method over the GET method, but if you use SSL, even the GET method is secure. You will see the Scroogle address and the search terms in your browser address bar with the GET method only because the browser displays this before it starts the SSL negotiation with Scroogle. Those search terms don’t go any further than your browser. The SSL in your browser strips off the portion of the URL after the question mark, and then provides this information to Scroogle only after the secure connection has been established.

When the Scroogle results come back from an SSL search, and you click on any of the links shown on that secure page, there is another advantage. SSL does not allow the browser to record the address where that secure page came from, and attach it to any outgoing non-SSL links on that page. Normally all browsers do this, and it’s called the “referrer” address. Using SSL blanks out this referrer, so that any non-SSL site you click on from a Scroogle SSL page won’t even know that you arrived at their site from Scroogle. The referrer will be blank, and your log entry at that site will look like any of the hundreds of bots that crawl the web all day and night with similar blank referrers.

All of these are good reasons to use Scroogle’s SSL option. It increases the load on our servers because the encryption handshaking is complex, but so far it hasn’t been a problem for us. If it does become a problem, we hope to get more donations so that we can add more servers.

Alexander Cockburn in “All The News That’s Fit To Buy” describes how the CIA disposed of Paul Robeson through drugging:

“Consider the CIA’s probable poisoning, at a fraught political moment, of Paul Robeson, the black actor, singer, and political radical. As Jeffrey St Clair and I wrote a few years ago in our book Serpents in the Garden, in the spring of 1961, Robeson planned to visit Havana, Cuba to meet with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. The trip never came off because Robeson fell ill in Moscow, where he had gone to give several lectures and concerts. At the time, it was reported that Robeson had suffered a heart attack. But in fact Robeson had slashed his wrists in a suicide attempt after suffering hallucinations and severe depression. The symptoms came on following a surprise party thrown for him at his Moscow hotel.

Robeson’s son, Paul Robeson, Jr., investigated his father’s illness for more than 30 years. He believes that his father was slipped a synthetic hallucinogen called BZ by U.S. intelligence operatives at the party in Moscow. The party was hosted by anti-Soviet dissidents funded by the CIA.

Robeson Jr. visited his father in the hospital the day after the suicide attempt. Robeson told his son that he felt extreme paranoia and thought that the walls of the room were moving. He said he had locked himself in his bedroom and was overcome by a powerful sense of emptiness and depression before he tried to take his own life.

Robeson left Moscow for London, where he was admitted to Priory Hospital. There he was turned over to psychiatrists who forced him to endure 54 electro-shock treatments. At the time, electro-shock, in combination with psycho-active drugs, was a favored technique of CIA behavior modification. It turned out that the doctors treating Robeson in London and, later, in New York were CIA contractors. The timing of Robeson’s trip to Cuba was certainly a crucial factor. Three weeks after the Moscow party, the CIA launched its disastrous invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. It’s impossible to underestimate Robeson’s threat, as he was perceived by the U.S. government as the most famous black radical in the world. Through the 1950s Robeson commanded worldwide attention and esteem. He was the Nelson Mandela and Mohammed Ali of his time. He spoke more than twenty languages, including Russian, Chinese, and several African languages. Robeson was also on close terms with Nehru, Jomo Kenyatta, and other Third World leaders. His embrace of Castro in Havana would have seriously undermined U.S. efforts to overthrow the new Cuban government.

Another pressing concern for the U.S. government at the time was Robeson’s announced intentions to return to the United States and assume a leading role in the emerging civil rights movement. Like the family of Martin Luther King, Robeson had been under official surveillance for decades. As early as 1935, British intelligence had been looking at Robeson’s activities. In 1943, the Office of Strategic Services, World War II predecessor to the CIA, opened a file on him. In 1947, Robeson was nearly killed in a car crash. It later turned out that the left wheel of the car had been monkey-wrenched. In the 1950s, Robeson was targeted by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist hearings. The campaign effectively sabotaged his acting and singing career in the states.

Robeson never recovered from the drugging and the follow-up treatments from CIA-linked doctors and shrinks. He died in 1977.”

Renew America asks a pointed  question about austerity for the proles versus r-‘n-r for the elites.

Note: we don’t think Michele Obama is any worse than any other presidential spouse…but…BUT…we are in the biggest recession since the Great Depression and her husband did spend a lot of his stump time “feeling our pain.”

So..hmm…I don’t recall him saying he would be doing it from Marbella?

Come on. If King Barack could wag his finger at Tony Hayward…a private executive… for taking time out in the middle of the Gulf oil spill crisis, then shouldn’t he be a little circumspect about his own glass house? (And yes, we know that Hayward and BP are as much about “the private sector” as Obama and the government are about “public service”). This Renew America commentary is perhaps ungenerous…but then again, why should generosity be a one-way street? People are cutting back all over the country. Do the Obamas really need eight vacations in a year?

“One of the fun games I used to play at cocktail parties was theorizing what a current politician had been in a former lifetime. Snickering over Henry Kissinger being a reincarnation of Cardinal Woolsey or Benito Mussolini popping back as Janet Napolitano only shows how obscure things can get after a few tequila shooters. However, there is nothing obscure about the current comparison between First Lady Michelle “Let ’em eat arugala” Obama and France’s 18th Century Queen, Marie “Let ’em eat cake” Antoinette.

Unlike with Marie Antoinette, Michelle’s critics don’t have to go apophrycal when it comes to her living large on the taxpayers’ dime. In a nation where food stamps, unemployment benefits, mortgage foreclosures and a steadily declining standard of living are fast becoming the norm, Michelle Obama is on her eighth vacation this year, living la vida ultima maxima with 40 of her closest gal pals at the Hotel Villa Padierna, one of the poshest hotels in the world let alone Marbella, Spain.

Estimates for the deluxe rooms, travel, food, Secret Service entourage, tourism, flight readiness/maintenance, local police action, like clearing off a public beach for Michelle and daughter, Sasha, are running close to half a million dollars. Limp excuses coming out of the White House Press Room like, “They’re paying for their personal expenses out of their own pockets.” (Like what? Toothpaste?) or “She’s visiting the King and Queen of Spain so that makes Michelle’s trip a public function.” ring hollow. If Michelle was truly visiting Spain on a goodwill tour, she’d be parking herself and her daughter with a minimal staff at the American Embassy in Madrid.

Even Argentina’s corrupt Eva Peron’s “Rainbow” good will tour actually brought tourism dollars back to her country. The only thing Michelle Obama will bring back with her is resentment over having to return to Washington, DC.

Now add up all this tin-ear extravagance of the First Lady with Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi’s taxpayer paid perks like $60,000 a year for office flowers alone, her commandeering of Air Force jets for private travel for herself and her family, the obscenely high rent of $18,736.00 per month she pays for her offices in San Francisco, and you have only scratched the surface marked “Waste of Taxpayers’ Money.”

Seriously, if those and thousands of other extravagant examples of fraud, waste and abuse are financed eagerly and without scrutiny by the General Services Administration, why are we being told that we must have our taxes raised? Just look at the utter surprise and shock on the faces of Congressman Charlie Rangel (D — NY) and Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D — CA) at being brought to task for what they consider “business as usual” fraud and ethics violations. Why isn’t anyone pointing out that if the government has this much money to throw around on nonessentials then it is collecting too much money to begin with?

Is it truly necessary to pump another 10, 20, 30 billion US Dollars into the kleptocratic bank accounts of African leaders under the guise of foreign aid? To what end? Did all our bribe money to Kim Jong Il of North Korea ever buy one minute of his or his nation’s good behavior? Why do we still need WWII military bases 65 years after hostilities ceased in countries that while they claim to still need our protection from whatever perceived political bogeymen are still out there, are openly hostile to our continued presence? What about all the US blood, ruined lives and treasure poured into Iraq and Afghanistan only to have those nations scheduled by the Democrats for abandonment next year?

Swinging back to more White House extravagance, do we really need to foot the bill for $100,000.00 plus Presidential date nights in New York or Chicago or photo ops buzzing the Statue of Liberty? Every third night there’s some sort of unnecessary gala or banquet going on where the Obama’s simply must be feted. All that expensive and distractive adoration leads one to wonder if the Obamas have yet to figure out how to operate the television remote control in their living quarters. Perhaps Michelle just calls down to one of 122 staff members to come up and switch channels for her.

The Obamas and their grotesque sense of entitlement are simply a sick manifestation of the socialist elites’ mindset. One of the dirty little secrets of that parasitical class is that they don’t really believe in socialism for themselves. It is simply a political tool with which to claw their way up what they see as the political dung heap. They are the roosters, if you will, of that dung heap. Standing proud and tall on the mess that they have created, dumping excrement on everyone beneath themselves, and crowing loudly in exultation as the sun warms their fine feathers all the while unaware that the Gods of the Copybook Heading are sharpening their axes for a Sunday dinner day of reckoning.”

Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

—  Matthew 7:16

Indian’s foreign secretary Nirupama Rao wisely puts Wikileaks, third-party meddling, and the Global War on Terror in their places, using the language of national and regional interests (which conform, in this context, to the libertarian principles of subsidiarity and localism)

NEW DELHI: It is vital to talk to Pakistan despite WikiLeaks expose on the role of the Pakistani intelligence in terror attacks on Indian interests, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao has said.

In a wide-ranging interview with a private news channel, Rao also made it clear that Islamabad cannot be given a blank cheque on the future of Afghanistan.

Underlining that dialogue was the most effective means of addressing contentious issues, she said that giving up the talks would not serve any purpose “in getting Pakistan to stop its pursuit of terrorism against India”.

The foreign secretary was asked if this held true despite WikiLeaks disclosures that Pakistan was directly and clearly involving in instigating terror against India, including in Afghanistan.

“I believe that dialogue is the most effective means to tackle outstanding issues with Pakistan,” she said. “In other words, dialogue is the most intelligent means of addressing points of contention.”

Dialogue, she said, “has served the purpose of putting across our deepest concerns in Pakistan”.

She said that what WikiLeaks had come out with was known to India for a long time.

“The role of officials agencies from Pakistan in promoting terrorism against India is something we have been speaking of and drawing attention to for a long time now,” Rao said.

“We understand and we know that country better perhaps than any other country in the world.”

She denied that India was dependent on the US to curb Pakistan’s terror machine.

“We are not dependent on any third country when it comes to transacting relations with Pakistan,” she said. “We deal directly with Pakistan, and bilateral issues are taken up bilaterally with that country.”

Turning to Afghanistan, Rao said that Washington’s increasing leaning on Islamabad for an American military withdrawal would not diminish Indian interests in that country.

“We are confident about our profile in Afghanistan and the fact that our interests will be well recognized by the international community,” she said.

“This is increasingly evident in the dialogue we have with our key partners.”

Rao added that “Pakistan cannot be given a blank cheque” vis-a-vis Afghanistan and any assistance to Pakistan ostensibly for counter-insurgency “could very well be used against India as the history of the last 60 years goes”.

She sought to allay fears that Pakistan would virtually take over Afghanistan once the US military left, saying Afghans were too independent a people to allow themselves to be subjugated.

“Afghanistan is a fiercely independent country. And the take away we have had from meetings with the Afghan leadership in the recent past is that they are zealous about guarding that independence.”

A former Indian envoy in Beijing, Rao said the relationship between India and China was complex but would be the “big story of the 21st century”.

“A story based on dialogue, which we intend to conduct intelligently and which we intend to conduct with confidence so that our concerns are protected always,” she added.

“Rao said the two Asian giants not only have a multi-pronged, multi-sectoral dialogue but also consulted each other on multilateral issues.

India and China fought a war in 1962 but have since witnessed an increasing economic relationship, with trade volume expected to increase to $60 billion by the end of this year.”

One must do everything one can and then say ‘God have Mercy!’ “

— G. I. Gurdjieff

The idea of the fourth way is strongly associated with Gurdjieff, who appears to have been the first to use this phrase. The bulk of his discussion of this idea is to be found in Ouspensky’s record of his teaching in Russia, In Search of the Miraculous. In his own writings, the idea is implicit but never mentioned as such (this is similar to his teaching on the enneagram). In Russia, he referred to three traditional ways:

1. Way of the Fakir, involving effort in the body
2. Way of the Monk, involving devotion and concentration of feeling
3. Way of the Yogi, involving largely mental attention.

In the fourth way, effort is made in all three: body, feeling and mind. This is harmonious development, as in Gurdjieff’s Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. To some degree, his series of movements or ‘sacred gymnastics’ epitomised this approach (in the learning of them rather than their performance). His inner exercises, insofar as these are reported, usually involved an act of mental concentration combined with physical effort; the feelings are also involved but spontaneously in the ‘I am’ state.

As with the other ways, the fourth requires its own kind of social organisation. How this has been interpreted has varied from group to group. However, in contrast with the traditional ways, the fourth does not require separation from conditions of ordinary life. Indeed, Gurdjieff often indicated that these conditions were ideal, especially in times of turmoil, for the ‘awakening’ process that he so strongly advocated and which is integral to the effectiveness of the fourth way. At the same time, work with others of like mind is essential.

Some of the reasons for this are:

(a) Different types of people see the same thing differently and thus a group working together can get an all round understanding (this is only valid if the ‘work group’ contains enough diversity, which is often not the case).

(b) Differences between people can lead to useful ‘friction’ providing energy for inner work.

It should be noted here that the latter consideration has led to considerable indulgence in negativity amongst Gurdjieff groups, and it must be remembered that such friction, to be useful, must be entirely voluntarily entertained and intelligent. Gurdjieff also said: ‘In the fourth way there are many teachers’. This belongs to the same requirement for diversity of vision. In the fourth way here should not be adherence to ritual, blind obedience or pursuit of a single idea, but understanding.

The fourth way is also the way of the sly man. Of him, Gurdjieff said that if he needs to obtain an inner result, he simply ‘takes a pill’. To obtain the same results the traditional ways would take days, weeks, months. The pill in question is probably not a psychotropic drug but a capsule of ‘intentional suffering’.

Why would the fourth way be introduced in this time and, is it something new? To answer the last question first, it is probably not; but, every time it is introduced it has to take a new expression. To a large extent, Idries Shah claimed that Sufism incorporated Gurdjieff’s idea of the fourth way; but it is common to find explanations for the sources of Gurdjieff’s ideas from whatever tradition one upholds. However, the Sufi idea of ‘being in the world but not of it’ strikes a resonance with the fourth way. To answer why it was introduced at this time is not easy. There are suggestions that, in this time of rapid transition and exceeding turmoil, new impulses need to enter humanity and these cannot be transmitted fast enough through the traditional ways.

This is problematic. There are no clear cut indications from Gurdjieff about the relation between ‘fourth way people’ and the rest of humanity. At the same time, we assume that Gurdjieff being an intelligent man did not believe that his ideas were the sole source of fourth way initiative in the world. One of the models for Gurdjieff’s own endeavour is provided by Arnold Toynbee’s concept of ‘creative groups’ that withdraw and concentrate and then re-enter their civilisations with new ideas and impulses.

The practice of the fourth way seems to require a special very adaptable know-how and cannot be followed by adherence to any set of standard procedures. Needless to say, the form of the fourth way has become ossified in many groups which have settled into a pattern of working together that has its roots in previous experience. But, if understanding is crucial to this way, then it must be creative and find ways of challenging itself. Understanding requires conditions of uncertainty, change, diversity and challenge. We believe that this understanding is not at all the same as seeking to understand what Mr Gurdjieff meant. In the literature, reference is made to the critical transformative step called the ‘second conscious shock’. It is said that this must always and in every case be unique.

This leads us to suppose that there is a whole class of approaches similar to the fourth way which exhibit various degrees of uniqueness and specificity. In this context, we need to develop our own way in every moment.

The fourth way is associated with the term ‘work’, which had great appeal in terms of the Protestant ethic. This term refers to conscious efforts by an individual to change herself and also the whole ‘enabling means’ that makes this possible, sometimes called ‘The Work’. The ‘work’ divides into three aspects: (1) work for oneself; (2) work for the group; (3) work for the greater whole (the ‘world’, the ‘Work’, even ‘God’). These three should be in balance. This scheme leaves itself open to a variety of interpretations, of various degrees of spiritual orientation. For example, John Bennett came close to identifying The Work with God. In this respect, one might easily find intense resonances with Gnostic teachings.

Bennett also gave rise to another scheme of the seven lines of work. Some of these were ‘active’ (effort) and others ‘receptive’. Over the years since Gurdjieff’s death there had been a tendency to bring in more passive lines of work such as is loosely called ‘meditation’; but, perhaps more importantly, some began to suspect the critical importance of being able to learn, which is a receptive act. There was also one line neither active nor receptive, but ‘reconciling’. In this line, it is the Work that manifests through us.

Finally, what is the fourth way and/or the Work to achieve? In brief, to cease to be a slave of external and internal influences and be able to contribute consciously towards the working of the whole.”